A Fistful of Knuckles

by Tom Graham

  The boy jabbed at him, shoving Sam’s chest.

  He’s testing me, seeing what I’m made of.

  ‘Get on back to your mammies, lads, before I nick the lot of you,’ said Sam gently. He made his way forward, found his path blocked again, but this time fixed the boy in front of him with a level, eye-to-eye stare. He didn’t blink. The boy did. Moments later, the lads shuffled back. They were just a gaggle of bored kids, playing at being men.

  Kids playing at being men …

  Unhurried and unconcerned, he headed off along the street. What stopped him was the voice that suddenly called out to him. It was the same boy who had challenged him, but somehow his intonation had changed.

  ‘That’s the last time you turn your back on me, Sam Tyler.’

  In that moment, the blood froze in Sam’s veins. He felt that same panicked compulsion to run, run for his life, that he had felt in the gloom of the ghost train last night.

  He span round. The boys were all standing in a loose group, staring at him, their leader casually lighting a cigarette.

  ‘Who told you my name?’ Sam asked. His heart was pounding. ‘Who the hell told you my name?’

  The boy drew on his cigarette, exhaled luxuriously, and said: ‘I make it my business to know my rivals.’

  ‘What do you mean, “rivals”?’

  ‘You and my wife,’ the boy said, his young eyes suddenly glinting with a very mature malice. ‘You, Tyler … and my wife.’

  ‘Wh … What the hell are you-’

  ‘You think you got rid of me?’ the boy hissed. ‘Oh no. I’ll keep coming at you, you cheating bastard. I’ll keep coming at you until I’ve got my wife back … my wife … mine.’

  The boy flicked his cigarette at Sam. It bounced off his chest in a shower of sparks.

  His rage overcoming his terror, Sam lunged forward, heedless of the pain that at once shot through his bandaged arm.

  The boys tore off, whooping and laughing, spreading out across the open ground, heading off in every direction – just a noisy group of scallies once more. They called back mockingly as they ran: up yours, mistah! Come on then, nick us! Oooh, I’m brickin’ meself!

  But the rage had gone out of Sam. In its place, he felt nothing but a cold, congealed dread. He looked back at the remains of the ghost train, and knew that whatever evil thing he had witnessed in there, he would witness again.

  When the Test Card Girl appeared, stepping out from behind the burnt ruins and standing innocently beside the bobby on sentry duty, Sam turned away in disgust and began walking. If she called to him, he didn’t hear.

  THE END

  Gene Hunt will return in

  BORSTAL SLAGS

  Another pint of Skol and a fresh packet of Embassy No.6’s awaits you in the cream-and-beige coloured splendour that is Life on Mars 3: Borstal Slags.

  BE THRILLED – as Sam comes face-to-face with the Devil in the Dark!

  BE AWED – as Gene waves his big shooter about!

  BE PATRONISING – as Annie worries her pretty little head about real, grown-up police-work. Bless.

  BE AROUSED – as Ray gets tough in the face of overwhelming odds!

  BE MILDLY DISGUSTED – as Chris deals with the embarrassing symptoms of a colonic disorder.

  All this – and so much more!

  Read on for a scorching sneak preview!

  CHAPTER ONE: ROLLIN’, ROLLIN’, ROLLIN’

  ‘Guv?’

  ‘What is it, Tyler?’

  ‘You’re going to kill us, Guv.’

  DCI Gene Hunt was driving as if the Devil himself was after them. He floored the pedal, sending the Cortina shrieking through the Manchester evening like a rocket. DI Sam Tyler gripped the dashboard as Hunt flung the car so recklessly round a bend that its off-side wheels lifted off the tarmac. It dropped back heavily onto its suspension, the under chassis scraping the road and sending out a sudden flare of sparks.

  ‘I might kill me motor’s springs, Sammy boy, but you and me is safe as houses,’ Gene growled. ‘It’s time you stopped worrying, Tyler, and learnt to trust the Gene Genie.’

  The Guv’nor jammed a fag into his gob, taking both hands off the wheel to light it up. He emitted a long, thick, stinking plume of smoke into Sam’s face.

  ‘Don’t you go worrying your pretty little head, Tyler, I’ll get us there in one piece.’

  ‘But you’re driving like a maniac, Guv. I don’t know what you’re rushing for.’

  ‘There’s nowt the matter with rushing. I like rushing. Rushing’s what I like. Now shut your cake-hole and look out the window like a good little soldier. Watch the world go by.’

  The world was indeed going by, and at a terrifying lick. Sam watched the shop fronts whipping past outside, the names rich with memories of his own childhood: Woolworth’s, Our Price records, Wavy Line. Bathed in the low, golden glow of the setting sun, the last of the evening’s shoppers headed up and down the high street. Sam glimpsed a young mother, no older than twenty, in a bright red plastic raincoat pushing twins in a buggy. A stooped old woman waited patiently at a Zebra crossing, her lined, toothless face peering out from beneath a fake fur hat that looked like a giant powder puff. Hurrying past her went a moustachioed man with collar length hair and thick sideburns, his beige trousers hugging his crotch so tightly that nothing was left to the imagination.

  This is my world now, Sam thought to himself, watching a kid in a Donny Osmond t-shirt slurping on a rainbow-coloured lolly shaped like a rocket ship. This is my world, and these are my people – for better or for worse.

  These streets, these shoppers, even the orange glare of the setting sun, all seemed much realer to him than the world he had left behind. 2006 was beginning to recede in his mind, or perhaps he was just less and less inclined to think about it. With effort, he could still recall his workstation at CID with its posturepedic office chair, its PC terminal, its energy efficient desk lamp, its neatly coiled charging cables for his mobile and Blackberry. But such memories seemed cold and dead to him. He felt no nostalgia for the world of touch screens and instant messaging – though maybe, from time to time, his thumbs hankered for the feel of a gaming console, his taste buds for the savour of sushi, his lungs for the comfort of a smoke-free pub.

  The Cortina roared ahead, its headlights blazing through the thickening gloom of evening. With a squeal of rubber, Gene narrowly avoided rear-ending a dawdling middle-aged woman in a VW. The Cortina mounted the pavement, ripped past the VW, and bounced recklessly back onto the road.

  ‘Dopey mare in a shitty Kraut shoe box!’ Hunt bellowed. ‘Why the hell do they let birds behind the wheel, Tyler? It ain’t natural. You might as well dish out licenses to chimpanzees.’

  Sam tried to keep his mind off of his guv’nor’s heart-stopping driving and turned inward instead. He thought back to how he had come to be in here in 1973 in the first place. His expulsion from 2006 had not been voluntary, nor had it been without pain. And it had all happened so fast! He could recall himself – 21st century DCI Tyler – pulling up by the side of the road as David Bowie played on the dashboard MP3. He could remember opening the car door and stepping out, in need of air and a moment to collect his thoughts. And then, out of the blue, came the sudden, agonizing impact of a vehicle slamming into him, the rush of air as he was hurled across the road, the bone-shattering crunch as his body smashed back down. Laying there, broken, his mind numb, he had lost all sense of space and time.

  Gradually, thought had crept back into his scrambled mind. Sensation had returned to his fingers, his hand, his arm – breath returned to his lungs – and then, with a gasp, he had gotten suddenly to his feet and found that he was most definitely not in Kansas anymore, but somewhere far, far away, well and truly over the rainbow. He was in a strange and alien world called 1973.

  And, having worked so hard to escape from that world, he had discovered that in reality it was the one place he felt he most belonged. Unlike in 2006, here he felt alive.

  But I’m
NOT alive, he thought to himself. In 2006, I’m dead. I jumped from a roof – I died – which makes me … what? A ghost? A lost soul? Is this heaven? Or hell? Or something in between? Or …?

  He shook his head to clear it, refusing to submit to these overwhelming speculations. He wasn’t a philosopher, he was just a copper. He couldn’t answer these huge questions of ultimate reality; all he knew was that he was here, in 1973, and that it felt good. He had a job, a purpose – and he had Annie. WDC Annie Cartwright was the bright beacon at the heart of his world, the one thing more than any other that had drawn him back here when he’d had his chance to escape forever. Being with her, he felt more alive than he had ever done – and that was good enough for Sam.

  ‘Here we are, Sammy boy. And you say I never take you anywhere classy.’

  The Cortina was nosing its way through the front gates of Kersey’s Scrap Yard. On all sides stood mountains of mangled metal, cast in the raking, golden light of the sunset.

  ‘This place is an Aladdin’s cave!’ said Gene, glancing about at the heaps of wreckage. ‘Alfa Romeos … A couple of Audis stacked up over there … A tasty little Datsun just rustin’ away …’

  ‘Not just motors, Guv.’

  Sam indicated at a mound of bulky washing machines piled carelessly amid the dead motors.

  ‘Who the hell chucks away deluxe twin-tubs?!’ Gene tutted, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘They’ve got to be worth the best part of a hundred nicker apiece.’

  Passing through this mountainous landscape of scrap, Sam spied a pair of mint-coloured Austin 1300’s parked up ahead.

  ‘Patrol cars,’ he said. ‘Looks like uniform’s beaten us to it.’

  Gene slewed the Cortina to a needlessly dramatic halt alongside the two Austins, showering them with dust. He flung open the door and strode manfully out, Sam following close behind. Together, they passed a parked lorry with a big open back for transporting junk. Lodged on the dashboard of the cab was a custom-made licence plate bearing the lorry’s name: Matilda.

  Just across from the truck stood the crusher itself, a looming contraption of battered metal and massive pistons, standing still and silent with its half-digested load of ovens just visible crunched within it. Several unformed officers had climbed up and were trying to peer inside.

  ‘Don’t tamper with anything!’ Sam called to them, flourishing his ID. ‘If there really is a body inside that thing then this is a crime scene, gentlemen.’

  ‘Crime scene? It’s a ruddy mess, is what it is,’ one of the PC’s called back, clambering down from the crusher. ‘You can see tufts of hair and what looks like a bit of a hand.’

  ‘Sounds like the missus,’ said Gene. He glanced across at a man in filthy overalls standing anxiously nearby. ‘Are you Kersey? DCI Hunt. Tell me what happened.’

  ‘Shook me right up,’ Kersey stammered. His hands were still shaking. ‘Never seen the like, not in nigh on twenty year.’

  ‘Take your time, Mr Kersey,’ said Sam.

  Kersey took a breath: ‘We got all this junk delivered in. Old ovens from Friar’s Brook. They’re knocking down the kitchens and boiler rooms over there and shipping ‘em to us as scrap. The lads had just finished unloading the ovens from Matilda, and I was starting to munch ‘em up before Gertrude arrives with a stack of pipes and fridges-’

  ‘Gertrude’s the name of your other lorry, I take it?’ enquired Sam.

  ‘No, it’s his mother, she’s built like an ox,’ Gene put in, sourly. Then to Kersey: ‘Keep talking. You were just starting to munch up the junk -’

  ‘I’d just started when I see all this red stuff running out.’

  Sam nodded thoughtfully: ‘So, Mr Kersey, you saw what you thought was blood coming out and you switched off the crusher straight away?’

  ‘Course.’

  ‘Did you touch anything? Move anything? Poke around inside?’

  ‘Did I ‘eck as like! I don’t wanna see what’s in there! I just shut her down and called the law, sharpish.’

  ‘Good man, you did the right thing. All of your co-workers are accounted for?’ Kersey nodded. ‘And you don’t have a pet dog or anything roaming about the place?’

  ‘There’s cats and foxes and God knows what all hanging about the yard, sure,’ Kersey said. ‘But I never had ‘em go in the crusher before. They got more sense, ‘specially them foxes. It’s a fella in there, you mark my words.’

  ‘And you have no idea who it might be?’

  ‘Nope. Or how he got in there. Or why.’

  ‘Right then!’ Gene declared suddenly. ‘Let’s get that crusher opened up so we can have a look. You boys, stop monkeying about up there and get your arses off that thing.’ The PC’s began scrambling back down to the ground. ‘Kersey, throw the lever and open her up.’

  ‘I … I’m not sure I want to,’ stammered Kersey. His face was ashen.

  ‘It wasn’t a request, Kersey, it was a polite but firm instruction.’

  Kersey froze. He’d seen more than enough blood for one day.

  ‘Think of it like opening a present on Christmas morning,’ said Gene, not very helpfully. ‘A great big lovely present full of mushed up body parts. That’s what I’m getting you, Tyler.’

  Kersey looked to Sam for help.

  ‘Show me what to do,’ Sam told him. ‘You don’t have to watch.’

  ‘Turn it on with the key,’ Kersey said. ‘Then release that handle, slowly.’

  Even as he spoke, Kersey was backing away, his face turning from white to green.

  ‘Everybody stand clear,’ Sam announced. ‘You all ready? On the count of three.’

  ‘It’s not Apollo Twelve, Tyler,’ grumbled Gene. ‘Just get on with it, you big fanny.’

  Sam turned the starter key. The crusher’s mighty pistons rattled and roared into life. Black smoke belched from the motors. He glanced around, just to ensure no-one was getting too close – and at that moment a sudden flash of reflected light caught his eye. Matilda’s sister truck was pulling up, just beyond the parked Cortina and the patrol cars; like its counterpart, it too had a custom-made licence plate propped up against the windscreen, which bore the name Gertrude.

  But it wasn’t the sun reflecting on the lorry that caught Sam’s attention, it was the sudden flash of light on the crowbar wielded by a masked man who was rushing out from behind a heap of smashed cars. The man jumped on to the lorry’s running board, threw open the door and began battering at the driver inside the cab.

  ‘Guv!’ Sam shouted. His voice was drowned out by the bellowing of the crusher. ‘Guv! Look!’

  But nobody could hear him.

  Gertrude swerved left and right, then the driver’s door flew open and the driver himself tumbled out, battered and bleeding.

  Leaving the crusher running, Sam bolted towards the hijacked lorry. Gene and the coppers gawped at him in incomprehension as he ran off.

  ‘Tyler … what the f …’

  ‘Felony in progress!’ Sam shouted as he ran. ‘Felony in bleedin’ progress!’

  The lorry turned clumsily, crashing through a mountain of metal junk. This, at last, got everyone’s attention. The uniformed coppers stood and gawped. Gene reached instinctively under his coat for the Magnum.

  Gertrude executed its blundering u-turn and went thundering out of the yard, smashing through a couple of parked cars in the street beyond before roaring recklessly away.

  Sam reached the driver where he lay. He was splattered with blood, terrified and confused, but conscious enough to growl at Sam, ‘That bastard nicked Gerty!’

  ‘What the hell’s on your truck that’s so valuable?’

  ‘Old fridges! Just a load of old pipes and fridges! And for that he bashed my bonce and nicked my bloody Gerty!’

  ‘We’ll have him!’ Sam vowed. ‘We will have him!’ He turned to the uniformed officer. ‘Don’t just stand there, get after that truck! Get on your radios, organize a road block!’ As the coppers scrambled into their little Austins and set their li
ghts flashing, Sam called to Gene, ‘I think we should stay here, Guv. We can monitor the pursuit over the radio, and make sure nobody tinkers with that crusher.’

  ‘Monitor the pursuit?’ sneered Gene, jangling his car keys as he strode swiftly towards the Cortina. ‘I am the pursuit, Tyler. I was born the bloody pursuit!’

  He disappeared into the car and gunned the engine. Sam dived in beside him.

  ‘Guv, wait, I really think we should …’

  But Gene wasn’t having any of it. They were off, rocketing past the marked patrol cars and ripping helter-skelter into the street. Sam flinched as the Cortina’s bonnet skimmed an oncoming car with barely an inch to spare.

  ‘Want to cast yet more aspersions on my driving, Tyler?’ Gene grunted at him.

  ‘I just want to get home alive, Guv.’

  They were hurtling along, diesel smoke from Gertrude snorting into the air fifty yards ahead of them. Just behind the Cortina, the two patrol cars were rattling along, their lights flashing, burning-out their feeble engines to keep up with the chase. The radio under the dashboard was alive with wild chatter as the word went round: truck on the rampage – heading for the heart of the city – block it, stop it, do what the hell you have to do but damn well get it off the road!

  ‘I’ll flamin’ get him off the road,’ Gene growled, and the Magnum was now in his hand, cocked and deadly.

  ‘Guv, for God’s sake, put that thing away!’

  ‘It’s my toy, and I wanna play with it!’

  ‘You can’t start blazing away in the streets, Gene!’ Sam bellowed at him. ‘You will kill people!’

  ‘Only badduns.’

  Gertrude was only a few yards ahead of them now, crashing madly forward in a black cloud like some sort of runaway demon.

  ‘It’s a sitting bleedin’ duck for a pot shot!’ Gene declared. ‘I can’t resist it, I’m having a crack.’

  He leant out of the window, driving one–handed, and lined up the mighty barrel of the Magnum with Gertrude’s rear tyres … but before he could squeeze off a shot, the truck swung suddenly to the left, smashing through a Pelican crossing and sending people running in all directions. Oncoming cars blared their horns and swerved madly out of the way.